Estelle Wallis, University of Warwick
With The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal, I wanted to give myself the challenge of incorporating the Arthurian legend into the Medieval Persian ghazal form. The ghazal’s stylistic characteristics are incredibly fascinating and unique compared to traditional Western forms, especially the rhyming patterns. I realised I also found this stylistic distinctiveness in Medieval poems, notably ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, with its unique alliterative form. This poem draws similarities between the themes generally explored in a ghazal (abandonment, love, and religious imagery) and the story of Sir Gawain. I created a deliberate ambiguity between the two female characters, respectively described as her and Her (the capitalisation reinforcing the religious aspects of the Virgin Mary, who has a major role in the poem). The erotic connotations of Gawain’s relationship with Bertilak also helped with adapting the ghazal to the Arthurian genre. Through this poem, I hope to illustrate the malleability of the myth; a modern Arthurian retelling could deal with queer themes and interpretations, for example, or explore its influence outside of the Western psyche from a non-European perspective.
I wrote Antigone Regina to experiment with the triolet form and to expand on the father-daughter relationship in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. My favourite aspect of this form is the opportunity to make the same line take different meanings through the poem. The line ‘Oedipus’ grave and weeping blood’ plays on the word ‘grave’, hence the comma that appears in the last line. I also wanted to draw on the relationship that various retellings of the myth placed between humans and gods, as well as the role of ancestry and inheritance – not as a curse, but a fundamental part of human experience on both the individual and the societal level. Although this poem does not explicitly deal with the Arthurian story, it therefore still speaks of the role of poems as important reinterpretations of a myth.
Tell me, O Knight, how blind you were to Her
Whose sapphire smile was hidden to view her?
How far away She seemed, the moonlit church,
Salvation-girdles, victory through her!
They would have laughed, O Knight, to see you pray
Between their hips – the Maiden, and You. Her.
The holy trinity – three kisses deep
My breath is tinged with both our sins. Woo her.
Delve, O Knight, into the greenlit chapel.
Your lover grazes your neck. You knew her.
My girdle green upon your waist, you ride,
You tell your tale, and find a brand new her.
Bleeding on the marsh, Knight, your eyes shut tight:
Remember green, and Bertilak, and your two Her.
The touch of sun-soaked hands against her cheeks;
Oedipus’ grave and weeping blood
Spilled on her baby dress in steady streaks;
The touch of sun-soaked hands against her cheeks:
“The gods will never love the Greeks.”
She’ll prize above a silent god
The touch of sun-soaked hands against her cheeks,
Oedipus’ grave, and weeping blood.
To cite this paper please use the following details: Wallis, E. (2022), The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal and Antigone Regina', Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research, Special Issue | Reeling and Writhing: Intertextuality and Myth, https://reinventionjournal.org/article/view/981. Date accessed [insert date]. If you cite this article or use it in any teaching or other related activities please let us know by e-mailing us at Reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk.